Trade vs Signal
Every strategy on a board has one of two jobs, holding a share of the portfolio or steering rules, and where you add it decides which.
Most strategies on a board do the obvious thing: when they turn Long they buy their market with part of the account, and when they turn Flat they sell. We call that a Trade role. A few strategies are there for another reason. They get no allocation at all; the board only watches whether they're Long or Flat, so that a rule can change the mix when they flip. That's a Signal role.
In the app you'll see the Signal strategies listed under Rules at the top of the Weights panel. The panel's own hint says it plainly: "A rule strategy gets no allocation; its Long/Flat signal steers the mix." Everything below Rules, grouped under Crypto, Stocks, Gold or DCA, is a Trade strategy.
[1. The Rules group with a strategy that only steers the mix: no percentage, no allocation. 2. A Trade strategy under BTC with its share of the ticker.]
A Signal strategy has no percentage, never shows up on the Allocation or Current charts, and isn't counted in the "N strategies" on a portfolio card. A Trade strategy has all of those. Both can drive a rule.
Why you'd want a strategy that holds nothing
Some strategies are more useful as a compass than as a holding. Take Andromedus T2 - BTCUSD/SPX. It compares two markets and is Long while BTC is doing better than the S&P 500, Flat while it isn't. You might not want to trade that, but it's a handy switch for the whole board: "while BTC leads, give crypto more room; otherwise lean on stocks".
That's exactly how All-Weather Index [GPS] uses it. Andromedus sits under Rules. While it's Long, the rule gives Crypto 40% and Stocks 35%; while it's Flat, Crypto 25% and Stocks 50%. Gold (15%) and DCA (10%) stay the same either way. The BTC, ETH, HYPE, chip-stock, S&P 500, gold and DCA strategies below it hold the portfolio's allocation.
When the rule strategy shows Flat but the bar at the top of the panel still says "Crypto 40", nothing is wrong. The bar always shows the starting mix; the rule's effect shows up on the Allocation and Current charts. Why does my portfolio... explains it in full.
How the role is chosen
The role is set by where you add the strategy:
- The
+next to Rules makes it a Signal. - The
+next to a ticker (BTC, SOXX and so on) makes it a Trade strategy in that market. - Add to portfolio on a strategy page, the bottom
+, and Add strategies on an empty board put it where it naturally belongs: a one-market strategy becomes Trade in its market, while most two-market strategies, the ones with a slash in the name like BTCUSD/SPX, go under Rules.
A strategy can be on a board only once, so it's either one or the other. To switch, remove it with the trash icon and add it again with the other +. Using a strategy in a rule doesn't change its role, and switching that rule off doesn't either; a Trade strategy can drive a rule and still hold its share.
Two-market strategies as Trade
You can add a two-market strategy through a ticker's + to make it trade. It then holds a position only in a market the portfolio can own. A BTCUSD/SPX strategy holds BTC while it favours BTC; when it switches to its S&P 500 side, the portfolio counts that share as cash, not as stocks. If you want S&P 500 exposure, add a one-market S&P 500 strategy under Stocks. Two-market strategies explains how these read their two markets.